Rafael Márquez, Mexico’s most accomplished soccer player, has spent the last 10 days training alone in Guadalajara, Jalisco, while waiting for a call from the national team to play in Russia this summer. Marquez has served as Mexico’s captain in each of the past four World Cups, but it was unclear whether he would be included on the roster to play in a historic fifth tournament after the United States government named him as a presumed associate of a wanted drug trafficker last year.

But the scandal has not been enough to bring him down.

On Monday, Mexico coach Juan Carlos Osorio said that “Rafa” would once again make his team’s preliminary squad. He is now close to joining Mexican goalkeeper Antonio “La Tota” Carbajal and German libero Lothar Matthäus as the only players to appear in five World Cups.